Leyland Advertisements

Sir, May I make a point regarding odd, and in my own example, misleading advertisements published by British Leyland, further to the three examples mentioned by “Curious” (July issue)?

It has often been mentioned in the Motoring Press that British Leyland persist in incorrectly positioning windscreen wipers on their cars, i.e., pivoting the wiper-arms on the nearside, and thus creating a blind-spot on the top right-hand side of the windscreen (the driver’s side). This valid criticism, incidentally, applies to most Triumphs, though not the Stag, and to all Marinas, although for a short time some Marinas had their wipers correctly positioned – but later they were all standardised back to front!

The real point of my letter is that in the recent advertisement showing a Dolomite Sprint lapping a test-track, the windscreenwipers are shown to be pivoted from the offside, i.e. correctly positioned for right-hand drive, when, in actual fact Dolomites have their wipers set up for left-hand drive!

Is this a photograph of a pre-production model, or has the photo been touched-up? Either way, it would seem that British Leyland are advertising a car as that car should be, but not as it really is, which seems misleading, if not dishonest.

One can put up with foreign imports not having their wipers adapted for right-hand drive, BMW being an example, but if Fiat can change their wiper set-up on their export models, why cannot British Leyland standardise correctly for the home market?

Kingswinford.

Roger Johnstone